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8 (of the 24) seats in theSenate, 1special election for a mid-term vacancy 13 seats needed for a majority | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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A senatorial election was held in thePhilippines on November 13, 1951. This election was known as a midterm election, and the date when elected candidates took office fells halfway throughPresidentElpidio Quirino's four-year term.
Philippine Senate elections are held viaplurality block voting withstaggered elections, with the country as anat-large district. The Senate has 24 seats, of which 8 seats are up every 2 years. The eight seats up were won by the 1st to 8th placed candidates in 1946; each voter has eight votes and can vote up to eight names, of which the eight candidates with the most votes winning the election.
The election of then senatorFernando Lopez as vice presidentin 1949 meant that his seat was vacated mid-term. A special election was then held for that seat underfirst-past-the-post system, for the rest of Lopez's term. This meant there were nine seats up for this election.
Block voting, established in 1941, was abolished in 1951 with Republic Act No. 599. This would later lead to more fragmented results in most national elections.[1]
As theHukbalahap rebellion raged in Central Luzon, Filipinos trooped to the polling booths for the 1951 midterm elections—a referendum on President Quirino, who had won the presidency in his own right two years prior. Despite the political remarriage of the two factions of theLiberal Party, the Quirinistas and Avelinistas, the Quirino administration was still far from popular. It had gained notoriety for its inability to rein in corruption and its ineffectual attempts to police lawlessness in the countryside. The Nacionalistas took advantage of the situation and mounted an active campaign to wrest back the Senate from the LP. Led by former PresidentJose P. Laurel, Quirino’s chief adversary in the1949 presidential polls, the NP swept all eight Senate seats in contention, the first total victory of the opposition in the Senate. So strong was the rejection of the Quirino administration in 1951 that even LP top honcho, Senate PresidentMariano Jesus Cuenco, lost his seat. Laurel received the highest number of votes, which was seen as his political rehabilitation and which made him the first and only president, thus far, to have served in the Senate after his presidency.
Felixberto Verano, also a Nacionalista, won the special elections held on the same day to fill the Senate seat vacated byVice-PresidentFernando Lopez.
TheNacionalista Party won all eight seats contested in the general election, and the seat contested in the special election.
Senate PresidentMariano Jesús Cuenco was the sole incumbent defeated, whileCarlos P. Garcia successfully defended his seat.
Six winners are neophyte Nacionalista senators:Manuel Briones,Francisco Afan Delgado,Jose Locsin,Cipriano Primicias Sr.,Gil Puyat andJose Zulueta.
NacionalistaJose P. Laurel returned to the Senate after serving from 1925 to 1931.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Before election | ‡ | ‡ | ‡ | ‡ | ‡ | ‡^ | ‡^ | ‡^ | ‡ | |||||||||||||||
| Election result | Not up | NP | Not up | |||||||||||||||||||||
| After election | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | √ | |||||||||||||||
Key:
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jose P. Laurel | Nacionalista Party | 2,143,452 | 48.81 | |
| Gil Puyat | Nacionalista Party | 1,906,402 | 43.42 | |
| Manuel Briones | Nacionalista Party | 1,774,687 | 40.42 | |
| Carlos P. Garcia | Nacionalista Party | 1,573,095 | 35.82 | |
| Francisco Afan Delgado | Nacionalista Party | 1,534,176 | 34.94 | |
| Cipriano Primicias Sr. | Nacionalista Party | 1,487,159 | 33.87 | |
| Jose Locsin | Nacionalista Party | 1,452,577 | 33.08 | |
| Jose Zulueta | Nacionalista Party | 1,395,095 | 31.77 | |
| Jose P. Bengzon | Liberal Party | 1,277,925 | 29.10 | |
| Pio Pedrosa | Liberal Party | 1,232,791 | 28.07 | |
| Teodoro Evangelista | Liberal Party | 1,210,815 | 27.57 | |
| Mariano Jesús Cuenco | Liberal Party | 1,205,897 | 27.46 | |
| Antonio Quirino | Liberal Party | 1,041,539 | 23.72 | |
| Primitivo Lovina | Liberal Party | 982,601 | 22.38 | |
| Juan V. Borra | Liberal Party | 869,160 | 19.79 | |
| Raul Leuterio | Liberal Party | 850,216 | 19.36 | |
| Josefina Phodaca | National Political Party of Women | 431,328 | 9.82 | |
| Jose T. Nueno | Independent | 93,246 | 2.12 | |
| Leonardo Tenebro | Independent | 2,132 | 0.05 | |
| Cesar Bulacan | Independent | 1,371 | 0.03 | |
| Total | 22,465,664 | 100.00 | ||
| Total votes | 4,391,109 | – | ||
| Registered voters/turnout | 4,754,109 | 92.36 | ||
To serve the unexpired term ofFernando Lopez until December 30, 1953.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Felixberto Verano | Nacionalista Party | 873,457 | 47.69 | |
| Cornelio Villareal | Liberal Party | 609,303 | 33.27 | |
| Prospero Sanidad | Liberal Party (Independent) | 223,810 | 12.22 | |
| Carlos Tan | Liberal Party (Independent) | 124,975 | 6.82 | |
| Total | 1,831,545 | 100.00 | ||
| Valid votes | 1,831,545 | 41.71 | ||
| Invalid/blank votes | 2,559,564 | 58.29 | ||
| Total votes | 4,391,109 | – | ||
| Registered voters/turnout | 4,754,307 | 92.36 | ||
The seat vacated byVicente Yap Sotto (Popular Front), who died in 1950, was one of the seats up for election. This also includes the result of the concurrent special election for the seat vacated by Vice PresidentFernando Lopez in 1949.
| Party | Votes | % | +/– | Seats | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Up | Before | Won | After | +/− | |||||
| Nacionalista Party | 14,140,100 | 58.20 | +5.68 | 1 | 3 | 9 | 11 | +8 | |
| Liberal Party | 9,280,247 | 38.19 | +1.62 | 5 | 18 | 0 | 13 | −5 | |
| National Political Party of Women | 431,328 | 1.78 | New | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| Liberal Party (independent) | 348,785 | 1.44 | New | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| Independent | 96,749 | 0.40 | +0.38 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| Vacancy | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | −3 | ||||
| Total | 24,297,209 | 100.00 | – | 9 | 24 | 9 | 24 | 0 | |
| Total votes | 4,391,109 | – | |||||||
| Registered voters/turnout | 4,754,307 | 92.36 | |||||||
| Source:[2][3] | |||||||||
| NP | 58.20% | |||
| LP | 38.19% | |||
| Others | 3.62% | |||
| NP | 100.0% | |||
| LP | 0.0% | |||
| Others | 0.0% | |||